Landscape photography is probably the easiest to get into because it does not require too much investment. You can take fantastic landscape photos just using your phone and nothing more. However, sometimes you will need to employ a bit of Photoshop trickery to replace boring skies in your images.

You may be wondering why you may need to resort to sky replacement in your images. Well, most of us, regular photographer folk, are not skilled mountaineers. And it is highly doubtful that we would get up before sundown to take a four-hour hike just to take a couple of shots on top of the mountain. Not when it is not a part of our job description. Furthermore, we would not like to lug tons of camping equipment to stay the night overlooking a spectacular vista, just waiting for the perfect light. Am I right?

So whenever I reach a place with an incredible view, the sun is always at the wrong place, and the sky is usually crystal clear blue and absolutely boring. But of course, I would be crazy if I didn’t whip the camera out of my backpack and take a few well-thought-out snaps. Then, in post, I can create some Photoshop magic and spice up my otherwise boring-sky landscape skies.

Let’s get this out of the way. I always shoot RAW, and all my images usually go from the camera directly to Lightroom. I do the bulk of my retouching there and go to Photoshop only after I am satisfied with the overall feel of the image.

In the past, I did not use presets as a starting point for post-processing in Lightroom, but lately, I have been converted to a believer and started developing my own presets to speed up my workflow. It is incredible how well they work. That is why I am giving you the basic preset that I use for this type of landscape.

If you don’t have a cloud subscription for Lightroom CC or Classic, do not worry, it will also work with Photoshop Camera RAW.

If you are new to Lightroom, it may be a good idea to learn a few basics and Essential Lightroom Shortcuts, which will help you speed up your editing process.

After doing the bulk of the post-processing in Lightroom, you are ready to replace that boring sky with something that will create more drama.

The first step is to find a suitable sky, which matches the image’s light and perspective.

One option is to steel the sky from one of the many other photos you have taken so far. Or you are like me, and you take pictures of cool-looking skies when you see them!

Another source is, of course, the web. Your safest bet is to go to a stock website such as Istock Photo or Storyblocks. There you can find almost everything you can think of. The negative side is that websites such as these are paid, and if you are not a creator who uses the service to generate income, you will not be likely to pay for a monthly subscription.

There are also free websites, such as Unsplash and Pixabay, where you can find a decent amount of license-free images.

For this edit, I did not want anything too extravagant. I wanted simple clouds without too much color, so I ended up using an image by Heike Trautmann (the one below) that I found on Unsplash. I just trimmed the grassy part before “stealing” the clouds. Pardon the pun.

Now you have to place the new sky on top of the old one. You can do this in several ways.

My preferred method is to use the command File > Place Link … 

In this way, I can place a Linked Smart Object whose contents are essentially an external file. Thus, in a single swoop, I have the benefit of a smart object, which I can edit non-destructively, and a smaller PSD file, which can otherwise grow rather substantially while doing more complex edits.

You have probably noticed that I have put my sky replacement Smart Object in a Layer Group. We will later use the group to manipulate the Layer Mode of more than one layer.

However, before we do anything else, you need to create two more copies of the sky replacement layer called “Midday_Clouds-1”. You can do this by using the shortcut Control/Command (⌘) + J or by dragging the layer to the New Layer icon on the bottom left corner of the Layers Tab.

Then flip one of the layers vertically and position it to have a mirrored image of the sky on the bottom of the image frame. You have to do this because the sky casts color and shadows to the ground, and the image will look unnatural if you don’t address this issue.

To flip the sky layer, you can go to Edit > Transform > Flip Vertically. You can also use the shortcut Control/Command (⌘) + T and then right-click on the image and choose Flip Vertically from the pop-up menu that will show up. After you do that, you have to reposition the flipped layer. Hold the Shift key (⇧) and drag the layer down until it snaps to the top sky layer. Then select the two new sky layers, right-click on one of them, and choose Convert to Smart Object from the pop-up menu.

You will end up with something like this in the Layers Tab:

Select the “Sky Replacement” Group and from the Layer Mode drop-down menu, choose Overlay. At first, the result will not be what you expect.

Now you have to make some masks and separate the sky from the cast on the ground. You can use your favorite masking method. I used the Quick Selection Tool since the sky and the mountain is very nicely defined. Use this mask to cut off the bottom of the sky replacement layer and the top of the color cast layer. Remember that black conceals and white reveals.

The next thing to do is to blur the ground reflections layer. First, you go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and choose the desired amount of blur. I chose a radius of 60px, which looks nice, and I decreased the layer’s Opacity to 60%. The best part when using Smart Objects is that you can go back and change the strength of the effect at any point of the edit.

I did not like the new sky’s intense color, so I added a Black & White Adjustment layer with 70% opacity and a layer mask.